In this conversation Grant Chiasson and I dive deep into the difference between surface-level mindset work and true belief recalibration - the foundational work required to unlock intrinsic motivation, peak performance, and aligned success.

I share my journey from a 20-year corporate career into purpose-driven work, explaining how most people unknowingly build their lives and businesses on misaligned beliefs,

And Grant, who is mental performance coach who works with athletes to build their mental toughness and resilience with proven actionable tools, discusses his approach,

And together we explore how identity, subconscious priorities, and emotional triggers shape performance - especially for athletes and high achievers.

The episode bridges performance psychology, entrepreneurship, and identity work, offering a powerful framework for:

* Discovering what truly drives you

* Breaking through mental plateaus

* Performing under pressure without entering survival mode

* Aligning your life, work, and goals with your natural design

In this video we cover:

(00:00 – 02:30) Introduction & Melody’s Background

* Melody’s 20-year corporate career and transition post-COVID

* Introduction to mindset work → reframed as belief recalibration

* Why traditional mindset work can fail without a solid foundation

(02:30 – 05:30) Mindset vs Belief Systems

* Difference between attitude vs deep belief structures

* The problem with “top 10 business ideas” culture

* Why identity and purpose must come before strategy

(05:30 – 08:30) The Risk of Misalignment

* “Toxic positivity” and forced motivation

* Building a business you end up resenting

* The gap between stated values vs lived behavior

(08:30 – 12:00) When to Recalibrate

* Recalibration triggers: growth, plateaus, new goals

* Parenting, coaching, and developing intrinsic motivation

* Exposure vs forcing outcomes

(12:00 – 17:00) Athletes, Passion, and Performance

* Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation in sports

* Dangers of pushing talent without passion

* Real-world examples (children vs elite athletes)

(17:00 – 20:30) Breaking Mental Barriers

* “Traits of the greats” framework

* Removing pedestal/pit thinking

* Unlocking performance through belief ownership

(20:30 – 24:30) Stress, Fear & Performance States

* Survival mode vs peak performance mode

* Fear = perception, not reality

* Reframing anxiety as fuel

(24:30 – 27:30) In-the-Moment vs Pre-Game Work

* Why mindset tools alone aren’t enough

* Two-phase approach:

* Pre-conditioning (belief recalibration)

* In-the-moment regulation (breathing, triggers)

(27:30 – 31:30) Burnout, Plateaus & Identity

* Recognizing burnout vs misalignment

* Reconnecting with passion

* Transitioning out of identity-based roles (athletes, careers)

(31:30 – 35:30) Identity & Self-Worth

* Detaching identity from titles and income

* Internal vs external validation

* Faith, identity, and subconscious programming

(35:30 – 39:30) Facing Fear Head-On

* Worst-case scenario planning

* Mental rehearsal and emotional desensitization

* Navy SEAL mindset principles (micro-goals, visualization, triggers)

(39:30 – 42:30) Redefining Resilience

* Resilience ≠ enduring suffering

* Resilience = recovery and adaptability

* Neutralizing emotional charge through recalibration

(42:30 – 45:30) Daily Mental Training System

* Morning visualization

* Midday reset

* Evening reflection

* Training the mind like a muscle

(45:30 – 50:00) Alignment & “Perfect Day” Concept

* No universal perfect day—only aligned days

* Living in top 3–5 priorities

* Difference between aspirational vs actual values

(50:00 – End) Education, Burnout & Real-World Application

* School system vs individualized development

* Burnout as misalignment

* Connecting responsibilities to intrinsic motivation

If this discussion resonated, and you’re ready to go deeper, here are 3 ways I can help:

1. Start with clarity - the Core Priorities Snapshot is a guided introduction to uncovering the subconscious priorities already shaping your life, and all subscribers get access for FREE.

Plus every Thursday you’ll receive a clarity-first article or podcast episode designed to recalibrate your thinking around truth, so you can build your life with true clarity.

2. Pinpoint Your Intrinsic Drivers - If you’re ready to go deeper now, this is a guided discovery process to identify your full core priority hierarchy, personal zone of genius, existing limiting beliefs, and a personalized Purpose Statement that becomes the foundation for everything you do.

3. Address the perceptions holding you back with Purge Misaligned Patterns - a facilitated belief recalibration process designed to:

* Identify the highest-leverage distortion

* Expose the assumptions sustaining it

* Correct perception at the root

* Neutralize emotional charge

* Stabilize leadership, pricing, and visibility

This is not motivation - it’s correction - and correction restores your power.

FULL Transcript

Grant Chiasson

We’ve got a lot to cover. We’ve got a lot to talk about. I mean, we’re both kind of delved into each other’s worlds in the last month or so and this is exciting. And you know, I think I’m very comfortable in a situation like this - going live, you know, talking to somebody that speaks the same language as me in terms of, you know, we’re all about the mental side and all about the mindset. So let’s just dive into it from the get go. Just introduce yourself in your words and take it from there.

Melody Lacey

Alright. Well I’m Melody Lacey. I spent over twenty years in corporate America leading project teams, multi, multi million dollar website development mostly, although I did start with the Department of Defense. That was a whole different culture. But I really wasn’t happy, you know. I followed the whole recipe for success, and thought I was nailing it and then I was miserable.

So around COVID, I left corporate America and never looked back. tried a few different things and in the process learned a lot about mindset work. And I use mindset as a generic term because there’s a lot of different ways to approach it. And I got trained in a couple of different methods that have just been life changing for me,

So now that’s what I bring to my clients. And as you saw, there’s a hierarchy of priorities, and it was interesting when I did that throughout my own training. That’s the first step in my process. You know, personal development and self-improvement is second in my hierarchy. And that’s funny, because if I look back at my whole life, that is consistent with my whole life, especially as an athlete, which is your main target audience, right?

And so it totally made sense that this was the next step in my career path. So I mean I could call myself a mindset coach from the standpoint of that being such a familiar term for people, but it’s more like belief recalibration because if you do mindset work with a set of beliefs about yourself that aren’t quite accurate, but they’re deeply ingrained in your subconscious, you’re just layering on a a weak foundation.

So the work I do actually comes before layering on mindset work to make sure you’re intrinsically motivated to do whatever it is you’re doing, and if you’re not, how to adjust that so that you’re meeting goals and growing in your life and career.

Grant Chiasson

Perfect. I mean, when I think about it too, it seems like the word mindset became interchangeable with like in my space, like the attitude. You know, you better have the right mindset going to practice today. But that to me you’re using as a word like your attitude, like you’re choosing how you think about it. But knowing now, I mean your entire mindset is just your total belief and shifts towards the big picture and then to the micro goals.

So I think it’s important to distinguish between it. You know, I think the perfect, like you said, my perfect title I would love to be called like a mindset and performance coach. But it’s like you said, you get it mixed up in the terms and mental performance is kind of where we’re at with it. But you know, it’s incredible your journey and what you’ve done and built because for me personally, you know, going through your purpose framework and you know, doing this, I needed this at the beginning, you know, because everybody if you look at YouTube, everybody searching or no, they figured out that you can say if you want to start a business, these are the top ten most profitable in twenty twenty six.

Melody Lacey

Yeah, yeah. It’s all about choosing the right niche.

Grant Chiasson

Yeah I know. And so, you know, if somebody is in a position where they said, look, I know the answer to all of my personal beliefs and problems is probably to start a business, and I want to have control. I want to be in that realm. I just have nowhere to start. I mean, they’ve got to dive into the purpose and identity right away. I mean, what you - what it created for me, and luckily, you know, I’m in the space, like I told you, I understand how to kind of feed it when I need it to to get the right feedback from it. But I mean just to have a full, clear picture of where I stand, what’s my branding, what’s my belief, everything that’s structured in my subconscious, just flowing freely to communicate it to other people. How can I help you? It’s so crucial and beneficial. So yeah, I wish I would have had this from the beginning.

Melody Lacey

That’s why it’s such a foundational piece, right? Because if you’re trying to build like, you know, I’m glad that the term toxic positivity started to be thrown out there because it really can become toxic to try to force positivity where you’re not really feeling it, right? Because that is a fast track to potentially just keeping you misaligned in whatever you’re doing. And if you are someone who is exploring, you know, decentralizing your career,

And you decide that entrepreneurship is something you want to pursue, but you’re not sure what you want to do, you really risk just creating another job you’re going to resent. And then, you know, you’re the one who’s done that at that point. So, you know, you need to figure out how to pivot if you find yourself now doing a job that you hate and it’s your own business. So the way to get ahead of that is to figure out what really you’re meant to do.

I believe that we’ve all been created with a specific calling and part of our calling is to figure out what that is. And we’re not taught how to do that in school. Our school system is set up for us to, well hopefully learn how to learn, but really learn how to take tests and really learn how to fit a mold, and learn how to get to a next step, which usually involves more schooling and then working for someone else.

So there isn’t much in the whole progression there that prepares anyone for entrepreneurship, let alone identifying what it is you really love to do. All of this discipline and motivation work is really just trying to force something that you’re not driven to do already. And there’s something to be said for being disciplined, but everyone is naturally disciplined in the things that they love.

And in something that you love already, you have that. So the whole idea with those first thirteen questions, and the first step of my framework, is to identify what those things are because your life is already showing you proof of what you care about most, and what happens is we’ve all inherited these aspirational values and priorities that we’re trying to essentially live up to.

In my podcast last week I was basically floating the idea for people who aren’t familiar with this work that if I asked you what do you value, what do you prioritize, people get excited. They’ll tell you all about it, right? But then if we take a look at the evidence in your life of how you spend your time… Well, will those two lists match up?

For most people they won’t, because people are trying to ‘be better.’ Well, you have to define ‘better,’ and I think we’re better off looking at the evidence in our life and being who we are and then building on that. Because there are ways to take what you currently value and prioritize, and if you’re not where you want to be, adjusting that. And that’s why belief recalibration is really a more accurate term for what I do, versus like mindset, which can, like we said, be interpreted lots of different ways. But belief recalibration kinda isn’t a familiar term for people.

Grant Chiasson

Right. Yeah. I mean, so I understand so in terms of recalibration, I mean, so look, I’m 33. I’ve had a good 10 plus years of trying to navigate, you know, real life, job, parenthood, fatherhood, all the things, ups and downs, roller coasters. So I guess my question is, how often should I recalibrate? If that makes sense. You know, because right now I’m in a really good spot. So it’s like, what does it take for me to say, okay, it’s time to kind of figure things out again? What do you think?

Melody Lacey

Yeah, well it’s whenever you’re trying to up your game in an area, and meet a goal.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot from the standpoint of what an athlete would need, and at all different ages, so I’ll answer it from that perspective. So I’ve been thinking about the role that you play as a parent and as a coach with a young athlete. So as you know, I homeschool my children, which is not something I ever planned on, but here I am. And you know, now I wouldn’t have it any other way. But the challenge that I run into is not from an education standpoint, it’s from socialization and exposure to things like sports. So I got them involved in cross country in the fall and now track now that we’re in the spring with the local school. And you know they pushed back a little bit.

I was a competitive athlete and so was my husband and we were just very naturally competitive, and just really driven to work hard, to try to win. We both did timed sports - Races. So it’s you against the clock and it’s all about your physical performance, which is like my whole thing. I just love to optimize everything I can. However, my frame of mind back when I was swimming, that was really my biggest sport I was most competitive in.

And I looked at it like if I didn’t win a race, even if I won a race, we’ll talk about that scenario. If I didn’t get my personal best, I was mad. And I had this thing in my head where you’re not taking it seriously enough if you’re not mad when you don’t do well. And here I was the one defining that, especially if it was a personal best situation. And I would just beat myself up over it.

And I know you work with athletes to try to get them beyond that moment, right? So it doesn’t trigger something in them because it absolutely did with me. So now as a parent, I’m looking at my kids and I’m having to push them a little bit to try new things. And so if you take my whole priorities hierarchy, it’s looking at, okay, what are you intrinsically motivated to do? Well, if they answered that right now, I mean running is not gonna show up in their top three and that’s really the zone you want to be in in life but our our hierarchy changes with stages, so now at 13 theirs is different than it’s gonna be at 15 and at 20, 25, right? Just because our stage in life changes so that’s to be expected but there’s gonna be some consistencies. So as a parent or as a coach, knowing what I know, how much do I push them?

Well, the way I look at it is our responsibility is to expose our children to as much as possible because how do you know what you like and what you’re passionate about if you haven’t tried things, right? So if they end up hating it, I won’t make them do it again. But I am going to make them go through a season because, you know, at first they didn’t like practice, but it was because they were out of shape for the first time in their life.

Well, they weren’t in the fall. They’re natural athletes. These girls could be phenomenal in any sport. They’re identical twins and we’re like, we have to get these girls into sports, but they’re just like, if it’s not fun, they don’t want to do it. But they l ended up liking cross country. But that’s coming off of the summer. So they were in amazing shape because they run around all the time. They don’t sit at desks all day.

But track season is in the spring, so it came off of winter. And we skied and stuff, but like they weren’t running around all day. So they were sore. And it was like what is going on? You know, they’re like fit 13 year olds who never felt the soreness of getting into shape. And so they had to get over that hump, and I had to say, all right, this is normal.

So part of it, you know, as a coach and as a parent or teacher, you’re teaching a kid what to expect because our satisfaction in life is really around met and unmet expectations, right? And so where do our expectations come from? We could have a whole live about that, just that topic. But they ended up not really being thrilled about practice and part of it was like on a track, you can see them the whole time. Whereas cross country, if they needed to walk, they’re in the woods, you might not see that.

And so they ended up loving the first meet. They didn’t want to do the meet, but then they ended up loving the meet. And so what’s happening is I’m having all these like little milestones of where keeping them going and exposing them to new things is really key.

Now, if you take an athlete, so you’re working with people who are really bought into their sport, right? And if you’re competing at the collegiate level, you’ve decided I’m dedicated to this sport. But there could have been a lot that led up to that that was external. So as parents, I think we really need to be careful to not push our kids.

So this is where I would find myself like, okay, I need to push you to get through a season to experience something new. Then we can talk about whether or not you like this, because I’m not gonna force you to do something you hate, and I’m gonna figure out how to build grit and discipline in something that you love because that’s really the zone we should be in and that’s the zone we should be aspiring to to get to at every stage in life.

But at the same time you have to see something through long enough to know what you like about it and what you don’t like about it. But if you have a situation where you have a coach, a parent or a teacher who’s really pushing a kid because maybe they have natural talent, but if they hate the sport, that’s gonna cause more damage in their long term psychological and mental health and in their performance because as you and I know our physical performance is arguably more affected by our mental game than even our physical conditioning because the physical conditioning is much easier than the mental game and that’s the work you do. So we have to be careful to not push a kid beyond I push them into something they hate.

So if you were to do the hierarchy of priorities with a kid and find out that this kid or so let’s say a college student, this person’s really not interested in football. Right? He goes to practice, he’s performs really, really well, but if you do the hierarchy, you find out it’s not where he wants to spend his time, because off the field, if he doesn’t care about football, that’s a red flag that this guy isn’t really into it.

So I think that’s the baseline. It’s figuring out if someone is passionate about what they are doing. Now, my mentor has this story he’s told multiple times about this pole vaulter. So in contrast to someone who doesn’t like it, if they found that out in their hierarchy of priorities, he worked with this girl who was just her whole life was pole vaulting. She spent all of her time thinking about it, reading about it, training. If you looked in her room, she had pole vaulting stuff everywhere. She was an Olympic pole vaulter. But she got there because it was pole vaulting all day long. It’s where she spent her mental time. It’s where she spent her physical time. It was in her physical surroundings. Pole vaulting was her life. Now, in a situation like that, you’re not questioning whether or not this person is intrinsically motivated. That’s there.

But if she wants to get to the next level, well now you have to start dealing with the belief recalibration. And that’s the step that I do with one on one work with people is really about getting to the traits of the greats. So what happens is we have these limiters in our minds of like, well that person’s really amazing and we decide why they are, right? Or that person’s really not good and then we kind of look down on them,

And in the process, we’re putting ourselves and the others in pedestals and pits. We’re on the pedestal for this person, we’re in the pit with this person. Now, if you’re trying to get better as an athlete, you do need to study other athletes. So in football, you watch plays, you watch, you know, games, you watch like what a quarterback’s doing, right? Like how did he move? How did he make that judgment of who to throw to and when and whatever,

And that is great, but if in your mind you think I’m not capable of that, well, how do we get over that hump? And that’s the belief recalibration. So first you start with what you did with the questions of identifying are you intrinsically motivated to do this?

Let’s assume yes. If you want to get better, what you do is you run this process for you choose you know, choose maybe if you’re a quarterback, choose five quarterbacks you admire the most. Study their traits and then we run the belief recalibration to show you you actually possess all of those traits. And what it does is it breaks down all the mental barriers that are really holding you back from your peak performance because you realize, this person actually isn’t above me. And what it does is it invites this energy into you into your body and into your mind and your belief system that you’re capable of anything.

And it unlocks talent that was just well locked inside of you when you go through this process. So you know, and you asked how often do we do it? Well, in that case, in an athlete, it’d be whenever they’re training, whenever they realize, I’m not getting past maybe I’m at a training plateau. So you know, then look at all right, what do I need to study?

And then essentially realizing Okay, I actually can do this. And it’s not about positive thinking. It’s a systematic process that really gets into the back of your mind, into your primal brain. And all our stress in our life, all stress comes from fear of losing something you desire or gaining something you’re avoiding.

That’s when the survival part of our brain kicks in. And you don’t want to be in survival mode when you’re playing a football game. You’re not going to have peak performance throwing that ball. So in order to master your life and your skills, you have to go through this recalibration so that you’re not being triggered and you’re not in survival mode. You need to be in peak mode when you want peak performance.

Grant Chiasson

Isn’t there a zone? I’m thinking back to my old psychology books now. It was like that zone of optimal performance where it’s like peak arousal, lowest performance, but like when they when they’re crossing their barriers together, like just enough arousal of that fight or flight to use it as fuel where you have just the right balance to where now you can operate at a high. You remember what I’m talking about?

Melody Lacey

Yeah. Adrenaline itself can make you run away, which you don’t want to do when you need to when you need to charge forward, right? but yeah, it’s a fight or flight and adrenaline can be a fuel for that, But you want to make sure you’re fueling the right behavior. When I say right behavior, that’s being defined by whatever goal the person’s working towards. And in this case, we’re talking about a quarterback, right? So you end up learning there’s been so many studies done that you know, what we perceive as fear when we have a physical reaction to something, there’s actually no discernible difference between that fear reaction that or the like anxiety and the just the vibration we’re feeling in our body and excitement. It’s all mental and how we’re perceiving what’s going on. And you can retrain, you can recalibrate that physical sensation to be a positive fuel for performance, and it’s really powerful.

Grant Chiasson

Yeah. And what you said too is another psychological trigger. I wrote about this on Halloween actually, because it’s called the alter ego effect. To where when you feel like that limiting belief kicks in, just like you said, and you have those anchored like role models and those anchored ones, and if you could like create just pick one of them out of the out of the five, you’d say. And when you feel that arousal.

And then when you feel that tension and that anxiety, which slows you down in your performance, you essentially have some kind of reset or trigger beyond, you know, the deep breath and anchor point to almost tell yourself, okay, wait, what would Tom Brady do in this situation? And it’s almost like you’ve learned so much and taken so much in that you actually have rewired your brain to think like that person. And you slowly, what’s the goal? Calm down.

Just relax, get back to that optimal level of arousal. So the alter ego effect, my mentor Ben Newman, keeps a note card on his favorite number’s forty-four. So he keeps like this secret agent note card thing that says like zero forty-four, like double seven, but he’s forty-four. And he just keeps it on his desk. And he’s like, you know what? When I’m like freaking out, when I’m going through one of those days, I just look at the card, like, okay, wait, what would James Bond do?

And I’m like, I do the same thing with Batman. I’m like, okay, what is Batman gonna do? You know, my mom and I had hundreds of Batman figurines growing up. So okay, this is part of your work which you’ve done to me. I know that I have this hero, you know, subconscious motive to be drawn to the hero as I learned yesterday, going back to what I enjoyed growing up and building things and fixing things. so just the little details that can shift your thought process, affect your arousal, filter out the body. You’re gonna perform at a higher level. It’s plain and simple.

Melody Lacey

Yeah, but I would argue you don’t want to be standing there thinking, what would Tom Brady do? Ideally, you’ve already done the belief recalibration to realize you possess the same traits that Tom Brady possesses, so that in that moment you know what to do. Because you’ve already dealt with that. If you’re constantly thinking, I want to perform like that person, they’re still on a pedestal, which means you’re still viewing yourself as less than. And that actually hurts your performance.

So the work has to be done pre performance moment. Pre-game where you’ve already gotten yourself to a point where you absolutely know without a shadow of a doubt you can perform exactly like that. Now, I mean, there might be physical differences. You still have to do the physical training, right? But the belief recalibration has been taken care of. So you might be like channeling a performance standard.

But at that point, if you’ve done the recalibration, it’s in you. So you don’t necessarily want to be thinking, I want to be like that person. You want to do the work to embody that trait. So now you’re the superhero. You’re as good as Tom Brady, you’re not less than. Where your framework is incredibly powerful, and for anyone who’s watching, Grant has this amazing resource, the Fearless 20. and it’s in the moment work.

So what it helps you do is, so my work revolves around triggers and getting rid of triggers. And so I didn’t use that word yet, because you’re not necessarily triggered by someone you admire, you’re trying to aspire. But the same thing is happening from a brain perspective where what’s happened is you’re triggered to think you can’t do it. You know, you’re less than that person. Whereas an emotional trigger could also be someone who really drives you crazy, right?

And you should maybe work on not letting someone else steal your joy and control your emotions, right? So you can work on so many different issues and triggers. But what your work helps big people with is in the moment, stress management. So that trigger doesn’t happen in the first place. Where you could be in a game where something happens and let’s say it’s catastrophic for the game, right? Or maybe you get injured.

And moving forward, you can heal your body, you can do all the PT, you can do all the training. But if you now have a fear that is stuck in your brain, you now have a trigger too. That’s gonna hold you back. And so the association to that fear. Obviously the triggers associated with something that you’ve grown to know.

You don’t want that to happen again, right? You know, and for I mean, no one wants things like an injury to happen. So if now your plateau is actually lower because you can’t get over it from a mental perspective, and now you’re dealing with a fear based reaction. Your framework is incredible. I so pictured when I was going through it, I pictured myself poolside and I’m like, if I had had this I could have done the breathing and the visualization immediately. That lessens the possibility for a trigger forming in the first place. So I see our work as like two-phase. You need skills for in the moment and for prep, and then you need skills that are like way pre-game, which would be the work that I would do. Make sure this is something you actually want to do.

Grant Chiasson

Well or even just the night before. Yeah.

Melody Lacey

Yeah, I mean it’s even just a night before, but like you’re not I mean, once you learn the skill, you can do it in the moment, but what you offer is more nervous system, right? It’s like nipping things in the bud and not letting your body go into a physical reaction and that, you know, really imprints on our brain because that’s what triggers the survival mode mechanism. And so they really go together so well and you know, if someone’s doing this work, they should be doing all of it, in my opinion, because we have lots of different parts of her brain and they could all use a little work. It’s not just the back. I know, it’s funny that I point there when I’m talking about it.

Grant Chiasson

No, that’s just the cerebellum, the little brain.

Melody Lacey

That’s the one that needs the most well, I don’t know. What happens is when you quiet the survival mode, you know, when you’re not being chased by a bear, right? We need to be functioning more in our prefrontal cortex. And so the belief recalibration really enables that. It enables mastery over your life, your attitude, but your performance, both physically and mentally. Beause anything we’re doing is a mental game.

And you don’t want to be in survival mode, right? I mean, just think of all the negative impacts we have physically from being in survival mode, let alone from a performance standpoint. Well, there’s health issues with that, right? Cortisol and all that. But yeah, I mean cortisol is actually, it gets a bad rep, but that’s just because it’s elevated in people unnecessarily. Cortisol plays an important role in our lives.

Grant Chiasson

Just spike it in the morning and you’ll be fine. I mean, if you spike that cortisol right when you wake up, you’ll be smooth sailing the rest of the day and it’s gonna be a perfect flow.

Melody Lacey

That’s right. Yeah, you just don’t want it spiking like all the time ‘cause then you know…

Grant Chiasson

No, I’ve been doing that. That’s not fun. No, no, that’s not fun. And what I see too, so obviously everything that I dive into when I talk, you know, when they say when you create for your avatar or whatever, perfect client. I just talk to myself when I was twenty years old. And I just say, Okay, here’s where I would have benefited from your framework. I’m at the point now where I’ve convinced myself my brain is in full flight mode. I’ve convinced myself that my body’s burnout. I’ve convinced myself that there’s no way beyond this plateau. There’s no way of getting out of this situation. And the only thing left to do is just run from this. And that led to quitting. And then I quit football. So I can see where, if I was 20 years old and I said, okay, I’m gonna go home for a weekend, I’m gonna get off the phone.

I’m gonna just do a full evaluation of myself, see where I’m at, and then say, okay, I am still in love with the game. I’m still with that passion. I still need to trigger that because that’s gonna motivate my next steps. And then so now you figured it out, you know where you’re at, you understand, okay, this is who I am, this is where I want to go. Now, boom, I would go to Grant Chessall and say, all right.

What’s the next steps? And then we start coming up with a plan of immediate action right now. So it’s being able to overcome the limiting beliefs. And number one, just stop thinking you have to do it all on your own. I mean, they’re right. This is crazy. You know, now I don’t make a decision now without talking to a hundred people, you know. But you know, just to reaffirm what I was thinking, I end up making the decision that I wanted to make, but you know, if I look back at that athlete and I say, okay.

Number one, you’re gonna find out that you’re still in it and you’re still passionate about it. Number two, if not, now you have an avenue to peacefully leave the game. Right. Build your identity beyond it, right? To build to start that next chapter. And that is so important. And I have a great friend. He plays basketball in the Philippines. He talks about he’s like a coach in the transition from athletics to no athletics, And the big gray area is who am I? Who am I? And that’s where an athlete would just absolutely benefit from diving into their purpose.

Melody Lacey

yeah. I mean absolutely. Like for me it was like, Well, who am I without you know, I never put much stock into the title that I had of titles I had throughout my corporate career. I enjoyed the income, which is what kept me there. Those are the golden handcuffs that kept me there so long. but you know, when you start doing your own thing and you know, you forego the income at least for a while, certainly the steady paycheck as a W-2 employee versus being self employed. You really start to realize, my God, I think I really did have more tied into my identity of who I am, what I do, and then I realized the title was actually a surprising part of that for me.

I didn’t even know how ingrained that was until I got to that layer of my own recalibration work. And then the paycheck, like is my worth actually tied to my income? You know? And as a Christian, I would say no. But then I realized, wait, there’s actually something to unpack there because do I really believe that? No. But is my brain still kind of functioning from that perspective? yeah. So that is something I needed to work on.

So there can be a real disconnect between who we think we’ve been, who we think we are. And if you know if you have a religious belief system, you’re probably putting yourself in perspective of that belief system, right? But that doesn’t necessarily translate to how we function in our daily life and the programs that are running in our brain, which is where this work is so valuable.

Because it can create a link between who we really are, which, you know, with my identity in Christ, I know who I really am, but do I believe it? You wanna make sure that connection’s there, because then that provides peace beyond positive thinking. Positive thinking’s not gonna get you there. It’s only gonna get you so high.

Grant Chiasson

Where’s my book? I’m getting into a lot. The power of negative thinking, Bob Knight. And it’s like yeah, all we talk about positivity, positive mindset, and I’m all for it. But you better face your fears and you better label them. And you better say, okay, wait. What’s the worst that could happen? And that’s what this whole book is about. What’s the worst that could happen? And then prepare for it. And then relentlessly prepare for that.

And that’s where he gets with negative thinking.

Melody Lacey

Dale Carnegie wrote a book called ‘How to stop worrying and enjoy your life’ and it is about dissolving the stress response by immediately making peace with the worst case scenario of any situation and how liberating that is.

Most of the time the worst case scenario doesn’t actually happen, but now you’re prepared for it. So anything that happens that’s less than that worst case scenario, you’re already good with, right? So that’s a really powerful way to deal with, you know a lot of stress we deal with.

Grant Chiasson

Yeah. And to get it out of your head. You know, don’t just sit there on your phone and think about, man, if this happens tomorrow, man, that’s gonna suck. You know, like you got you gotta be physical with it. You gotta get a pen and paper out. You could crumple the paper up right after, but you gotta get a pen and paper out and say, If this happens, then I’ll do this.

Melody Lacey

Yeah, it’s not dwelling on. That’s different.

Grant Chiasson

You know, I go back to a story of a kid who was a senior in high school. It was the state baseball tournament. This is a couple years ago. This guy was an incredible athlete. And he was going through a slump in the playoffs. And it was like the semifinal game. And he was 0 for 4. At the bottom of the last inning, down one. Maybe tied. He was 0 for 4. And it was like two outs. What’s gonna happen?

And just like in slow motion, I can still see it like I’m watching it today. Made con just enough contact, swung, popped it right over the shortstop’s head, winning run comes in, we win. So they go to the state championship and they win the state championship. So after all the dust settled, I went up to him. I said, man, look, you know I’m diving into this stuff. I was fresh into like mental performance and just diving into performance psychology. I said, what was going through your head?

And he said, you know, I didn’t say don’t strike out again. I said, you’re due for one. Let’s make contact.

Melody Lacey

Right, odds are he was gonna hit it, right?

Grant Chiasson

Yes. Yes. Instead of him saying what is the worst case scenario. So now I tell athletes, I say, I t when I tell that story, I say, You need to see yourself in that worst case scenario the night before. You’re 0 for four, there’s two outs and your team needs you to get a hit, how are you gonna respond? And then just sit with that. And just sit with it. Just sit with the feeling like your gut’s gonna turn upside down and just sit with it and then say, Time out, okay. Secondly, what if I do strike out and lose the game for them?

Okay, like let’s just go through it. Of course it’s gonna suck, season’s over, everybody’s pissed, but at the same time, like the sun still comes up. You can move on to the next chapter. Right. That’s how it was meant to be. So just rehearsing it all and just having that mindset. I mean, it’s so powerful. And this whole week, sneak peek, tomorrow I’m dropping my article on the Navy SEALs and the mindset. And the psychologists that came in, they narrowed it down to four aspects of what it would take to increase graduation rates because there was a higher need for seals at the time and they were all just tapping out like this is nuts. So he they said it came down to micro goals, it came down to visualization, mental imagery, rehearsing it over in their head.

It came down to the self-talk and then teaching them about triggers where, you know, don’t think like every second of the day, I gotta do this for my kids. You know, the ones like that. Yeah, yeah. Wait until that moment where you’re on the brink of total disaster and say, okay, I need that trigger right now. Boom. See the kids holding you, walking off of a plane. You just save somebody’s life because of the extra training and what you did in the field. And then boom, here’s that shot of adrenaline. They finish what they got to do and keep going.

Melody Lacey

Right, ‘cause what we’re actually trying to develop is resilience, right? Resilience I feel like has been kind of I don’t know, misused. It’s not our ability to stay in a bad situation and tough it out. It’s our ability to bounce back stronger and to not let things tear us down quite as much. And so you know, with the recalibration work what we would do, in everything you just described is and in the worst case scenario. So you’re right, you touched on this a bit. If you are running through a worst case scenario, you people run the risk if they don’t know how to do this work properly, of letting that actually consume their minds, right? They might start dwelling on that and reeling on that. And instead of it freeing them, it would become a hindrance.

Whereas the recalibration work I do, you’re looking at the benefits and drawbacks across a whole range of very specific questions that look at they’re challenging. They’re like, what’s the drawback of this going well? And what’s the benefit of it not going the way you want it to? And you’re neutralizing the charge that would hold you back from peak performance so that your body and your mind are no longer hindered from performing at their peak level. and so it’s not just a matter of, okay, it probably won’t be as bad as the worst case, and like, you know. It’s okay, even if that really did happen, there would be so many benefits in that happening, and so really nothing bad, so to speak can happen in any scenario.

And so if you release yourself from all of that emotional drama, then you really can bring out the most in whatever it is you’re trying to do. Which, and especially when it’s sports, we’re talking about a physical per performance but also the mental game. But the mental applies to everyone, everywhere, all the time.

Grant Chiasson

Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I that’s why I tell one of my biggest selling points is, you know, where when you think of, you know, the way I practice in sports psychology or the rap that you would get from, you know, the perceived sports psychologist in a movie or something where, you know, it’s those weekly one to one sessions, got the clipboard and all that. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right, right. Tell me about life, like look, yeah. Every day, non negotiable, when you wake up

You’re gonna tie into your goals. You’re gonna think about what motivates you and your passion. And then you’re gonna fast forward, you’re gonna close your eyes and feel the emotion as if you felt what you would get from accomplishing that goal, that big scary goal. What’s it gonna feel like and see that? Yeah.

Correct. Just wake up and start the day with that. Midday, get a reset, get a box breath, recalibrate the nervous system. End of the day, reflect on the wins. What can I improve on tomorrow? And go. And if you do it the right way, like every single day, I mean you’re you’re gonna build the resilience. There’s just there’s just no evidence to show that you’re right. There’s just no evidence to show that that won’t possibly be that it won’t be ineffective.

There’s just nothing to show that. It’s proven.

Melody Lacey

That’s what training is. You know, I mean it’s easy to look at like a Navy SEAL, like so I’m excited to read your article tomorrow. But you know, it’s not like that these Navy SEALs at five years old were somehow like, you know, already on the track to being a Navy SEAL ‘cause they were so amazing in the face of danger and distress. But through the course of their life they were probably predisposed to handle stressful situations well. And if someone goes into the program they’re certainly inviting that kind of challenge into their life. And it’s because they believe that they can overcome challenges, right? But when someone’s in combat or in a life or death situation, your ability to do what you’ve been trained to do instead of freeze, or maybe sometimes you should freeze, right? Maybe you should be hiding. I mean there’s all different things that they’re trained to do in a life or death stressful combat scenario. And so in order for someone like that to be able to perform over and over again, they can’t be taken down by any one situation, right? They have to be able to do it again tomorrow or next week or whatever, right? And the mental toughness that they develop is through training.

I mean we can’t be caught in these situations with now I need to run this fourteen step process like that’s right in front of us. The training has to be done, you know, to whatever level it needs to be the need is, right? So earlier I was talking about the traits of the greats, like that’s something you would work through, you know, systematically, when you when you’re focusing on that, right? That’s not like an on the field type training exercise.

But then on the field, that’s where you know the box breathing and calming the nervous system comes into play. And it all counts. And you know, anything we’re good at, we’re training for. We’re training our brain and our bodies for whatever it is we do on a regular basis. And you know, if you’re a chef, you train. You’re cooking. Right? I mean my family teases me all the time. Melody’s always training and it’s just my nature, right? I’m always just trying to get…

Grant Chiasson

And you just say, and that’s why I’m a beast. And say, Take note. That’s why you say that. That’s the first response you see to that.

Melody Lacey

Well, it’s just you know, we don’t get better at things by accident, right? So if you really want to get better at anything, you need to look at what it’s gonna take and then do the work. And that’s what you and I are trying to help people with from a mental standpoint. A mental toughness standpoint. And the work is so powerful. It’s been really life changing for me and I’m happy to be able to bring it to others.

Grant Chiasson

absolutely. I mean, that’s part of the mission. you know, what I learned when I trained with Ben, he said for you to have a perfect day, if you to just have a perfect day in this system, what I’ve seen with the high performers, high achievers, what I coach, he said you need to have one task that makes you a better person, one task that improves your business, or if you’re an athlete, your athletic, you know, profession, you know, a lot of professional athletes with him or your craft.

And you need to give back to somebody else. That’s it. Three three domains of a of a perfect

Melody Lacey

So everyone’s hierarchy of priorities are revealed in the questions they ask you. And in that case, his hierarchy was revealed in what he said it to you. Those are clearly the things that are most important to him. Now, for someone else, it might be a little different. Maybe it’s being able to withdraw for a little bit and recharge in that way.

Grant Chiasson

See I would count that as personal development though.

Melody Lacey

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I mean, those are big buckets you just listed. And I’m not actually, it sounds like maybe I’m countering those and I’m not. I’m just trying to make the connection between what one person values and what another person values in terms of their priorities. And that is you can easily see it in others because like the questions, like if I say, How’s your family? Well, right there you know how much I value family.

Because we talk about and we think about the things that are most important to us, and that’s gonna be different for everyone. And so a perfect day for one person versus another is totally perception based, and our perfect days are how aligned we are with our top three to five priorities. And that’s what you know the work you did through my program, those thirteen questions reveal.

And you’ll realize that if you’ve gotten through a day and you’ve really only hit like priority seven, eight, and nine, you’re dragging. You’re not feeling inspired. You’re not feeling any natural energy. But when you’re in the top three to five, it doesn’t even really matter what happened that day. If those are being fulfilled in some way, you feel great. And you know, we all experience this. We just don’t necessarily know what to attach it to. And that’s what the questions help reveal.

And you know, if we talk about your perfect day, it could be aspirational and then you’re always let down by it. When you realize the times you feel the best are actually when you’re functioning within your highest priorities. And so addressing that gap is really powerful for people. but yeah, you’ll hear it in other people of, this is my best day. And it’s and you weren’t saying this. You weren’t saying, my day should be the same as that person’s best day. But there are buckets for sure that we all need filled. They’re just filled in unique ways because no two people have the same set of priorities. And I’m talking subconscious priorities, you know, that’s what I’m always trying to help people understand is there’s the aspirational priorities, what we think we value, and then there’s what our life really demonstrates.

Grant Chiasson

Yeah, I have this smile on my face because I’m just thinking about the perfect day of my students when I was a teacher. And maybe you can confirm this being the mother of 13 year olds, but I’m just thinking of my perfect day, 33 years old, like wake up, get some sunlight, exercise, get some cold, just deep breathing, get to get to writing for an hour and a half, get a walk, get some work done, communicate, network, read a little bit and then you know go walk the family and then I think about a lot of my students like their perfect day is just waking up and just praying that they get a text that school is canceled and then staying in bed for the entire day and and just hibernating.

Melody Lacey

Homeschooling’s really different. because it well, I provide a personalized education. I’m not forcing everyone into a mold, And so I think that my job as a parent is to I mean, I have to teach the fundamentals. So if you don’t like math, too bad. You have to be able to function in the world. But at the same time, if you can show a kid where math helps them meet their highest priority, ‘cause you wanna you wanna know that even at thirteen, right? A kid that wants to stay in bed all day, that’s probably a stress response. Because by day if that kid was allowed to do that for a couple of days on end, they’d get out of bed on their own and they’d start doing the things that naturally.

Grant Chiasson

Definitely a sign of burnout just because like you could tell it’s like mid semester and look, I get it. I’ve been there too. But yeah.

Melody Lacey

Well, they’re sick of being told what is important when if that’s and that would mean that there’s a huge disconnect between what they’re being told to do and forced to do versus what naturally inspires them. So there’s so many applications of what I do. So you know, talking about niching down and figuring out your audience, the work that I do applies to literally anyone. I mean, I could choose any avatar because it’s applied to every aspect of life, every every type of person, and it’s used in schools. So there’s a lot of people who use it in schools and you know the ADHD term is thrown around a lot and really you know my mentor has kind of dispelled that as so this woman came with this case of my kid yeah all he thinks about is hockey.

We can’t get him to pay attention. He’s moving in his chair all day long. We can’t get him to focus in school. And this facilitator, who does the same type of work I do, worked with all the parents and the teachers and basically proved to them that they’re no different. This kid there’s not anything wrong with this kid, ‘cause when you when he started teaching them, so what he did is he reversed it and he had the kid start teaching this group of people all about hockey for a couple hours. This kid was teaching them all about the things that he’s learned about with ice hockey. They start moving in their chairs, they start looking at their phones, they start gazing on he’s like, look at all the people in here who have ADHD. Right? And so like I have the opportunity to to tailor what I’m doing to the interest of my kids, but then yes,

So what he ended up doing is helping those parents and teachers link the subjects that you know we have to learn regardless, even if they’re not inspiring. But to hockey. This is how it serves your highest priority. That’s cool. This is what you care about the most. And so when you start making those links, people get on board for things that they weren’t when they couldn’t see the connection, and so the point of the exercise that that facilitator did was to show them there’s nothing wrong with the kid.

Grant Chiasson

That’s cool.

Melody Lacey

Because there was actually nothing wrong with you. You just weren’t interested in hockey. But when we can make those connections, we unlock, you know, our ability to learn things that we previously didn’t think we were interested in, but it’s because of the way they’re presented. And there was a disconnect in our brain that it wasn’t serving us. And if it’s serving your highest values and priorities, well it’s like it’s like almost a magic wand. You’re like, all right, I’m on board. I’m in.

Grant Chiasson

I just think I found a magic money wand. My brain is churning right now thinking about a workbook that is football themed that teaches math and reading and science and social studies. And I’m like, my gosh. Like this is.

Melody Lacey

Studies have been done around like video games, right? So there’s been like a pain point for parents for years, right? all my kid wants to do is what is play video games. And you know, a kid who wants to get really good at gaming might end up being interested in software development. And if that kid realizes, well I have to learn how to code, which requires math skills and reading skills, that kid’s gonna learn it.

We will pursue learning anything it takes to meet the goals that we are really naturally driven towards because we’re naturally inspired to do it. But when you’re forced to do something you really don’t care about, it’s just harder. And so you have to be able to make those connections and and that’s like central to the to the work I do in terms of application for for others and it’s what I’m

Constantly navigating with my kids. I mean, you know, they’re not necessarily excited about every topic we’re learning about, but again, you have to as a parent and a teacher, you have to balance exposure and then feeding passion. But with a kid, you’re also the exposure is what will help you identify the passion. I mean, unless they’re exposed to things, how do they even know what they like, right?

Grant Chiasson

That’s true too. Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s why when you think about, you know, the ones who, like you said, like just thinking about school. Like even for me, I mean, a meat head quarterback, I was like, I hate school, but I am obsessed with football and like I’m counting down the minutes till practice at two thirty, you know, and but in the combination of those two, it was like, Okay, well, high school is not bad.

It was just thinking about it from that perspective. But I love the I love the thought process of finding ways and just challenging teachers to do that to find passion mixed with learning and

Melody Lacey

Teachers in a classroom are dealing with a very real challenge of crowd control. Right. And it’s really hard to provide a personalized education to thirty kids with one teacher. so I get the challenge. It’s one of the reasons I just opted out of that. It’s a really big challenge that educators have to get creative about addressing. But as a parent, you could take this process and what you do to link, like, say, let’s just use the math

Let’s use math football ‘cause that’s what were that’s where your mind went with making

Grant Chiasson

I’m just I’m just seeing dollar signs about this workbook…

Melody Lacey

Right. Your kid’s gonna be a math whiz and a football star. But if you can show a kid, all right, here you basically you do the benefits and drawbacks of how the math skills will make them a better football player. Yes. And so it’s a specific process. It’s not just like, yeah, I mean I guess I don’t know. That would be a that would maybe be a stress, like or a a stretch to just dream up and that’s why there’s a process for doing it. Right. Because what you ultimately are doing is you wouldn’t link it just to football. You would link it to that athlete’s top three priorities and say, This is how math is serving you. This is how not knowing math is gonna keep you from fulfilling your highest priorities in life. And then it’s like BAM, your brain gets on board.

Grant Chiasson

You have to have a why. You have a why instead of why are you doing this to me? You know? Yes. Why are you doing this to me? And I used to like making that connection too, trying to make them think a little bit different. man. For sure. We can talk about this for hours. I mean, yeah. So look, Melody, I don’t want to keep you any longer. I mean, this has been incredible. You know, this the work that we’re doing, the work that you’re doing is super beneficial.

I can’t wait to cut these into little shorts and send it out everywhere because people need to see and know. You know, a mentor said this Tuesday, he said, you know, we’re always worried about growing the business and getting the next customer and the next lead. But it just comes down to talking, being present, having the relationships. And he said, just imagine before you get a little exhausted thinking about, you know, putting out that extra post or putting out that extra content or making that extra direct message, whatever it might be.

Said, what if tomorrow that message, that content, that piece gets across that one person that is just desperately waiting for a melody to come into their life to help them get over that barrier? And it’s like, my gosh, okay, yeah, let’s go. Let’s get after it. Like it’s just purpose. Yeah.

Melody Lacey

You know what’s interesting is when I was first introduced, I guess it was maybe the second round, of the method that I now facilitate. I was active in an online session with hundreds of people, but I was interacting with the facilitator and he asked what do you hate about doing your business? I’m like, the marketing. my god, I hate the marketing, right? ‘Cause you know, as you when you end up being a solopreneur

Now you can still outsource, right? Like you can hire agencies. In fact, I’ve managed marketing agencies. I worked in marketing departments, but it was doing, you know, website development projects. But again, I was managing the C suite and I was not doing that work, But what you see in that scenario, just kind of side note, is that there are different people and whole teams doing the work that you end up doing single handedly as a solopreneur. So for anyone feeling stressed by that, it’s a big job.

Well, so the guy looks at me and goes, Well, what if you didn’t hate it? And I was like, I can’t even imagine that. I can’t even imagine not hating it. No, he’s Yeah. And he kept saying it and I was like, Well, I guess I wouldn’t hate it. Like I guess it’d be better, it’d be easier. And you know, he was basically leading me into doing the benefits and drawbacks work on that.

Grant Chiasson

It’s unfathomable.

Melody Lacey

But what my mentor is constantly driving home is, you know, you’re not gonna be intrinsically inspired to do every aspect of your business. I mean, there’s just too many different functions and skills you need, right? And if we’re talking about like really functioning in our top three zones, it probably has very little to it maybe you have some priorities that fall into a marketing bucket, right? Like maybe you love maybe you love creating videos, right? Like some people really love that. I don’t but some people do, right? So that part of your business probably comes really naturally to you.

But maybe you aren’t good at the finances, right? He really drives home outsourcing the things you don’t like and the things you’re not intrinsically motivated to do because they’re not in your top hierarchy of your priorities, and find people where those things are their top three. Because then everyone wins.

The person that you hire, and you know, a lot of times, you know, we’re dealing with financial constraints as solopreneurs starting new businesses, right? But he’s like you’ll get a return far beyond what you are paying when you hire the right people. If you hire the wrong people, you’re losing money. You’re losing money out of the game. You hire the right people, they’re producing way beyond what you’re paying. And the way that you know is, you know, I have this process of

You pretty much have to prove to yourself that they are functioning within their highest priorities because they’re gonna perform like rock stars because they love it, they’re motivated to do it, it’s not just a job for them, it’s a passion, and that’s what you really want. For every aspect of your business and other aspects of your life, you want a team who’s functioning in their highest values every day. Because then they’re bringing it, they’re gonna be the best.

And you know, that’s how we fill gaps. And so there’s I said there’s so many applications of this method. I mean, it’s used in the corporate setting all the time. I mean companies put together like values and missions statements whatever, that’s b******t. You can’t have it at a company level. I mean, yeah, that can be aspirational, you can try to convince people, but people function at their individual level.

And until you can tie into that as a manager and make sure people are in the right roles, people are always going to be underperforming and they’re going to be there just doing a job instead of feeling inspired by the work they do. And when you’re inspired by the work you’re doing, there’s no stopping you, right? And so the application for a solopreneur is just finding those people to fill those gaps so you don’t have to be everything to everyone all the time because that’s just not possible.

But what it’s gonna do is it’s gonna distract you from the things you really are inspired to do. And you’re gonna end up feeling drained and depleted instead of inspired and energized. And you know, when you’re doing something you love, you can do it all day long. You don’t even get tired. Right? You have more energy at the end than you had at the beginning. But when you’re not inspired, it drains you in the first five minutes. And well, even beforehand, because you’re probably dreading it.

Grant Chiasson

Right. It’s like getting into a cold plunge. It’s like, my gosh, why am I doing this again? And then once you get out of it, it’s like, yeah, okay, cool, yeah. That’s good. All right, it was worth it. So good. Well, awesome. Look, Melody, can’t thank you enough. We’re gonna have to do this again. We’re happy to this again. This is so awesome. We everybody who’s tuning in, I see we got ten people. I mean, look, thank you guys for listening and watching. this is gonna be on my mindset Monday post that I’ll try to collaborate with Melody that we’ll do on Monday, try to get that in there. But either way, best place to reach you, Melody, right now.

Melody Lacey

Well, I mean everyone’s joined on Substack, so check out my Substack and if you subscribe you’ll be on my email list. I’m a little late on today’s podcast, but I’ll get that l out later today. But I try to publish something every Thursday and then of course, you know, daily notes from my brain on the Substack Yeah. But on my profile is my link to my website where you can learn more about the various products that I have and basically other groupings of self serve tools and then working with me one on one. Perfect. But thank you, Grant.

Grant Chiasson

This was great. This has been great. Awesome. Well definitely benefit from this, learned a lot and looking forward to talking to you. Likewise. All right.

Melody Lacey

Yeah, sounds good.

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